Comfort Food
by ethelbertina
Summary: a quick peek into the character's lives. Bobby, Alex, Mike, Danny, Jimmy... and now CAROLYN. The lastest one is short, but was trying to get inside Carolyn head.
1. Chapter 1  Bobby

a/n: I guess you could call this a drabble... I don't know what it is, other than an idea that hit me as I was driving back from lunch...fueled probably in part by the premiere tonight and that shot of Bobby on the kitchen floor...

Comfort Food

_way back when..._

Bobby carefully climbed up on a kitchen chair and got a can of soup from the cupboard next to the stove. He found a battered pan and dug out the can opener from the drawer and did his best not to cut himself on the jagged edge of the can. Dumping the soup into the pan, and adding water was the easy part. Then he had to drag the chair over to the stove and lean way over to turn the burner on. He found a big spoon in the sink that didn't look too dirty and used it to stir the soup until it boiled. As he listened to the game show filtering in from the tv in the living room, he tried to make a game out of things and tried stirring his soup in patterns ... first one way and then the other ... round and round in the pan, keeping the noodles from sticking and warming everything evenly, just as he'd seen the lady on the cooking show do it. He had already made himself a peanut butter sandwich, and put it on a plate on the kitchen table. He poured some milk into a jelly jar and sat it on the table next to his sandwich. Carefully carrying the hot pot of soup back to the table he tried to pour some into a cereal bowl without spilling it. Most of ended up in the bowl, but he did spill some onto the tablecloth which he tried to mop up with a dishtowel. He gathered up a couple of paper towels to use as a napkin, and propping his library book up on the butter dish, he sat down to dinner.

_in the here and now..._

Coming to the end of the page of the article he was reading, he idly grabbed a spoon out of the dish drainer to stir his soup which was threatening to stick to the bottom of his favorite saucepan. He was unconsciously stirring counterclockwise every fifth stir as he stood at the stove listening to the strains of a Vivaldi violin concerto coming from his stereo, and reading about an archaeological dig in the Gobi desert. Feeling the steam rising around his hand, he paused to wonder how many cans of soup he had heated up over his 46 years. With one eye still on the article, he grabbed his favorite bowl from the drainer and some Saltine crackers from the cupboard, and set them on the counter next to the stove. Sloshing the soup straight from the pan into the bowl, he spilled some not only on his hand but on the magazine he was trying to read. He sucked the soup off his thumb and mopped up his magazine with a hastily grabbed paper towel. Although smeared, he was still able to make out the beginnings of the next article on the state of cormorant fishing off the coast of Thailand. He yawned tiredly and thought about all of the things that he could add to the soup to make it more exciting, but in the end decided that at one in the morning, crackers and a spoon were the only things he was prepared to stick in his bowl.


	2. Chapter 2  Alex

_Chapter 2 -- Alex_

_way back when..._

Eight-year-old Alexandra Eames stood on the curb, watching the kids crowding around the Mr. Softie truck parked at the end of the block. She jammed her hands in her jeans pockets and scuffed her sneakers in the gravel by the side of the road and wished she had some of her allowance left. What she wanted to do was to sit in the maple tree in her backyard, racing to eat her popsicle before the hot summer sun melted it down her arm. She usually got yelled at for getting all sticky, but Alex didn't care -- a cold orange popsicle was one of her favorite things in the world. She would sit on a springy branch in the dappled shade of the maple leaves and imagine herself far away from the small dusty corner of Queens where she lived. But even if popsicles cost money, sitting in her tree didn't. Running around to the backyard, past her brother who was grumpily mowing the lawn with their old push mower, she jumped up to catch hold of the bottom branch of the tree and pulled herself up into the tree. In the distance she could hear the song that the ice-cream truck was playing as it drove off down the street.

_some thirty years later..._

Alex sat in her hospital bed, looking at the bassinet beside her. Her small, red, wrinkled nephew lay sleeping, wrapped up in striped blanket and a small blue hat. Her partner had just left. She was still holding the musical stuffed lamb he had brought as a baby gift. For the first time since she'd arrived at the hospital she was alone with the small person she had given birth to. A child she had carried in her womb for nine months, but who she would not carry out of this hospital. Her sister and brother-in-law would have that honor. She curled up on her side and concentrated on watching the small boy she would always feel responsible for. Quietly efficient nurses came and went, checking on her and the baby, but Alex just watched on, grateful for every moment she had with him. Eventually, she realized that one of the nurses was at her side, pulling up the tray table and setting a small dish down in front of her. The nurse smiled at Alex, helped her sit up, patted her on the arm, handed her a spoon, and left the room. On the table in front of her was small bowl of orange sherbet. Alex wound the key on the lamb's back and listened to the toy as she placed it in her nephew's bassinet. Smiling to the strains of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," she slowly ate her bowl of sherbet, as she silently wished her child ... her nephew... a happy birthday.


	3. Chapter 3 Mike

Comfort Food -- Mike

_a/n: you have to look pretty hard to find the comfort food in this... although it is there. This ended up being more about something that makes Mike UNcomfortable. I like that, though. Not sure who to do next. Suggestions...???_

Mike was sitting at his favorite neighborhood bar, Peter J's, sipping his Irish whiskey, and watching the people around him. He had learned at an early age to watch others, alert for what they might do to him. Over his twenty-five years as a cop, he had honed that particular skill to a razor sharpness. It was often said of Mike Logan that he could always spot the criminal in the room. In truth, he could always spot a lot more than just the crooks. Even on this particular Tuesday night, without even trying, he had spotted the couple in the front window breaking up... and the couple in the back corner hooking up. There were a couple of brothers at the end of the bar arguing over a racing form, and some NYU students standing around the pool table betting on whether one of the girls could beat her male opponent. He watched the bartender water the college kids drinks, and the waitress flash her cleavage at the brothers trying to increase her tip. He sat and thought about his hot-tempered temporary partner going home to her husband and her kids while he sat alone in a bar sipping whiskey and eating peanuts.

He ordered another drink and slipped off the stool for a quick visit to the men's room. When he got back, a well dressed, but very drunk young woman was now sitting on the stool that had been his for most of the evening. With a wink and a smile he leaned past her to grab his whiskey. As he reached around her again to grab the peanut bowl the waitress set a couple of gin and tonics down in front of the young woman. As she turned to go back to her friend, she crashed right into Mike dousing him with her drinks. Many apologies and a couple of bar towels later, he called it a night. The young woman, Cheryl, had insisted on giving him her phone number, which she had written on a napkin and which disintegrated into a soggy pulp in his pocket as he walked home, chased by the scent of the gin that had soaked his suit.

As he was climbing the stairs to his apartment he passed the stock analyst who lived on three, who got a whiff of all the gin and clapped him on the shoulder with a hearty, "that must have been some party, buddy!"

Inside his apartment he made bee line for his bedroom where he peeled off his wet clothes, and tossed them in the basket in the corner. He made a mental note to stop by the Chinese laundry in the morning and drop off his suit. He had a pile of shirts ready to go in anyway. He headed to his dresser to get a clean t-shirt, and as he sat on his bed and pulled his gin soaked t-shirt over his head the smell sent his memory racing back to a day some forty years earlier.

That long ago day when he learned to hate the taste and smell of gin.

Twelve-year-old Mikey had come home from school slamming the front door of the apartment behind him, and dropping his books on the living room rug. He got himself a glass of milk and a handful of cookies, and plopped down by his schoolbooks to do his homework and watch TV. He finished his schoolwork, and when the six o'clock news came on he turned off the TV and headed into his bedroom. Off and on over the past couple of hours he'd paused to wonder where his mother was, but he had quickly decided he didn't really care. He had learned a long time ago that he was better off when she wasn't home. And in the eighteen months since his Dad had died, things had gotten progressively worse. He grabbed a couple comic books and lay face down on his bed reading them until the light outside his window faded, and he could no longer see. He sat up and pulled the chain over his bed that turned on his ceiling light, and then rolled over and dug his baseball mitt and a baseball out from under his bed. He lay back on his bed, tossing the baseball up in the air and catching it in his mitt, and gazing at the Yankees pennant taped to the wall at the foot of his bed.

His dad had bought him that pennant two years ago on when they had gone to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. It was, Mikey thought, probably the best day of his whole life. Hand in hand, father and son had taken the Number 4 train uptown. Hand in hand they had walked into the newly renovated stadium, and once inside they sat in the bright, shiny, new blue seats and looked out over the green grass underneath the cloudless Spring sky.

Forty years later Mike sometimes allowed himself to hope that, if there is a heaven, that it looks a little like Yankee Stadium looked on that sunny Saturday afternoon.

Father and son did all the things that fathers and sons do at a baseball games. They cheered on their team, yelled at the umpires, and tried to tell themselves it didn't matter that their team didn't win. They ate hot dogs, and had bags of peanuts thrown at them. They drank ice cold sodas during the seventh inning stretch, and then went home tired but very happy. Mike clutched his pennant and his other souvenirs tightly the whole way home. The program, the ticket stubs, and even the empty peanut bag were kept in a shoe box under his bed, along with an assortment of well worn baseball cards.

He was in the kitchen making himself a bologna sandwich when he heard the buzzer. It rang with the triple ring his mother always used when she forgot her key, which was almost always. He buzzed her in and was picking up his schoolbooks from the carpet when he heard her banging on the door and yelling, "Michael, get out here and help me, these bags weigh a ton!"

He opened the door, grumbling, "Why do you always forget your keys?"

"Someone always lets me in," she blithely answered him as she headed for the kitchen carrying two sacks of groceries. "Now put those books away and come clean up this mess you made in here so I can put these groceries away! There are crumbs everywhere."

"I was just making myself a sandwich."

"I don't want excuses from you, just do what I tell you. Why do you always make things so difficult?"

Mikey wanted to say that he thought she was the one who made things difficult, but he'd had enough whippings to convince himself that some things were better left unsaid. As he finished making his sandwich, he watched his mother dig a couple of bottles out of one of the grocery bags and make herself a pitcher of martinis. She poured herself a drink, added a couple of olives and went off into the living room to watch TV. He cleaned up his dishes, put away the groceries, and was about to sit down at the table to eat his sandwich. He went to the refrigerator to get the bottle of milk. The milk was behind the pitcher of martinis. Mike gingerly set the glass pitcher on the counter beside the fridge and with the milk bottle in one hand, reached up into the cupboard to get a glass for his milk. As he was turning, his sleeve caught on the glass stirrer sitting in the martini pitcher knocking it over. It smashed on the edge of the counter, splashing him in the face, and causing him to drop the milk bottle, which shattered at it hit the floor. Mikey looked around in horror at the mess that was rapidly spreading across the kitchen floor. He grabbed a tea towel and as he knelt down trying to mop up some of the liquid he sliced his knees open on the many pieces of glass that littered the floor. Red blood joined the curdling puddle of gin and milk.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what the Hell is going on in there?!" he heard from the living room.

Tears streaming down his face, he tried to wipe them away as he called out, "I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do it, it just ..."

"Christ Almighty, Michael, what did you do?" His mother stood in the doorway looking down at him.

"I was just trying to get a glass of milk, and my sleeve caught on the pitcher, and I dropped the milk and..."

"Waste, waste, waste. Do you think money grows on trees? Do you? I go out every day to earn the money to buy you that milk, and how do you repay me?All I want to do at the end of a long day is relax and what do you do? You wreck everything." She grabbed him by the arm and shoved him into a kitchen chair. She grabbed the nearly empty bottle of gin off the counter and unscrewed the top. "Since you like gin so much, it's a good thing I've got some handy. Nothing like alcohol to prevent infections." With that she dumped the rest of the bottle over his cut and bleeding knees.

"Mom, please, please don't..." he cried, flinching as the stinging alcohol soaked his shorts and mixed with the blood running down his legs. His socks turned pink from the blood.

"Get the hell into the bathroom and clean yourself up. I'm going out, since I can't even relax and have a drink in peace in my own home. You can clean up this mess you made in here.

Mikey changed his clothes and stuck some band-aids on his knees, and cleaned up the visible mess in the kitchen as best he could. For weeks after the incident the apartment reeked of spoiled milk. He couldn't clean up the milk that had run under the refrigerator, and some of the milk had dripped down into the heating grate, spreading the smell throughout the apartment, and even into the neighbor's apartments. The day the super came to complain to his mother about the smell he got another whipping from his Mother. She had kept one of his father's old belts in her closet and through the years Mike came to know that belt well. He never forgot. Anger, shame, and humiliation were always remembered, and they always smelled like gin to him.

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_a/n: This has taken me a couple of weeks to craft... I write REALLY slowly...and it kept wanting to get longer and longer. And I know almost nothing about Mike's childhood... and less than nothing about baseball. Isn't an imagination a great thing?!_


	4. Chapter 4 Danny

Comfort Food -- Danny

"Daniel, if you don't finish what's on your plate, you won't get your fortune cookie. Don't you want to know your fortune?"

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"Nancy, please wait, the fortune cookie's the best part."

"I have to go Dan, are you going to walk me home or not?"

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"The only problem with eating leftover Chinese food in bed is there are no fortune cookies," he said as he fed his bride another dumpling.

"Don't you think you're fortunate enough?" she asked as she smiled and kissed a dribble of soy sauce off his cheek.

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"Is there a spot in his baby book for baby's first fortune?"

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"Anyone want that extra fortune cookie?"

"Go ahead Captain, Goren never eats his."

"You do realize that the fortune cookie is a purely American construct, although arguments exist about whether it originated in San Francisco or Los Angeles. There is a legend from the thirteenth century linking the traditional Chinese mooncake to..."

"Bobby, can you pass me the duck sauce?"

"Sure Eames, here you go. Now where was I? Oh, the mooncake..."

"Next time, Captain, don't ask, just take it."

"That's good advice Eames."

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"Logan, get your mitts off my fortune cookie!"

Mike tossed the still wrapped cookie across his desk, saying "Sorry, Cap," as the two men looked over pictures from that morning's autopsy.

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"I know I promised you dinner, Liz, but things are crazy up here with this case. How about I pick up some Chinese takeout and come over around ten?"

"OK, Danny, but make sure you ask for extra fortune cookies... they're the best part you know."

"I know," he replied and she could hear him smiling over the phone.


	5. Chapter 5 Jimmy

Comfort Food -- Jimmy

Jimmy Deakins wondered about the connection between cops and donuts. Mostly he thought it was all a load of crap. But, he was having that thought while he was in the elevator on his way to the eleventh floor of One PP carrying a two large boxes of donuts. "This is the last time I bet against Logan," he vowed to himself as he dropped off the boxes in the break room, and poured himself a cup of black coffee.

As he was returning from his morning briefing with the brass upstairs he saw Logan sitting with his feet propped up on his little desk, munching a chocolate donut and reading something from the Post to his partner. Jimmy got himself another cup of coffee and went into his office shaking his head over this newest addition to his squad.

"How does he always know?" Jimmy thought to himself. The guy's alibi had seemed air tight. But Logan, somehow he knew there was more to the story. He continued to mull over the case in the back of his mind while he rid himself of several stacks of paperwork on his desk. He was just tossing the last of the folders into his out basket when the subject of his thoughts appeared in his office doorway. Logan leaned on the door frame, and with a twinkle in his eye, said, "Hey Cap, I saved you the last donut. I guess no one likes pink sprinkles..."

"Just leave it on my desk and get back to work Logan. Unless you're looking for something to do, in which case I have lots of incident reports that need to be filed in triplicate." Deakins was smiling, but one of the many things Logan knew was when not to press his luck.

"We're headed out to Rikers to talk to Koushik. Hopefully a couple days on the inside will have convinced him to tell us what he knows."

"Step into him Logan. We need his confession."

"We'll do what we can."

Logan grabbed his pad from his desk, his gun from his locker, and made his way across the squad room floor, stopping only to filch a pen from the Santa mug on Eames' desk and to demand the keys to the car from Barek who was waiting impatiently for him by the elevators.

"Incorrigible" Jimmy thought to himself as he gazed at the pink and white donut sitting on his desk and smiled.


	6. Chapter 6 Carolyn

Comfort Food -- Carolyn

"Cherry tomato?" she asked the man seated in the driver's seat of the red department-issue sedan. "They're from my garden," she continued, holding the ziploc baggie towards him. Outwardly, she continued the conversation with her partner, but as she gazed out the rain-spattered windows of their car, her mind was more actively involved with thinking about her garden.

She had padded through the dew-wet grass in her yoga pants just after dawn to gather the day's ripest tomatoes from the plants staked up alongside her garage. Across the slate path, a small brown rabbit was nibbling at her lettuces. She knew she should chase him away, but didn't have the heart to deny him an early morning snack. Truthfully, she didn't plant the butter lettuce for herself. She preferred a sharper salad green, but her mother had always planted butter lettuce, and so Carolyn continued to do so out of habit. She had seen this same rabbit many mornings, and they were learning each others ways.

As they worked their first case together, Carolyn couldn't shake the image of that rabbit whenever she looked at her new partner. No one in their right mind would compare her brash partner to a timid rabbit, but she when she got too close to a subject Mike didn't want to discuss she could see in his eyes the same fear the rabbit had when she got too close to him. She could watch Logan walk into a crowded bar and search the room, and remember the small brown rabbit sitting up on its back legs, nose twitching, scenting out potential danger. And as they stared at each other across the observation room at the end of their first case, she could see in Logan the same wary watchfulness and lack of trust the rabbit had given her that very morning.

"Come on Barek, it's been a long day. Let's grab something to eat. I'll let you buy. But no rabbit food. I want red meat," Logan said as he stalked past Carolyn on his way to dump his files in his desk drawer.


End file.
